The next web
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0:00 - 0:02Time flies.
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0:02 - 0:04It's actually almost 20 years ago
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0:04 - 0:08when I wanted to reframe the way we use information,
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0:08 - 0:11the way we work together: I invented the World Wide Web.
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0:11 - 0:14Now, 20 years on, at TED,
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0:14 - 0:18I want to ask your help in a new reframing.
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0:19 - 0:23So going back to 1989,
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0:23 - 0:26I wrote a memo suggesting the global hypertext system.
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0:26 - 0:29Nobody really did anything with it, pretty much.
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0:29 - 0:33But 18 months later -- this is how innovation happens --
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0:33 - 0:3718 months later, my boss said I could do it on the side,
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0:37 - 0:39as a sort of a play project,
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0:39 - 0:41kick the tires of a new computer we'd got.
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0:41 - 0:44And so he gave me the time to code it up.
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0:44 - 0:49So I basically roughed out what HTML should look like:
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0:49 - 0:52hypertext protocol, HTTP;
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0:52 - 0:55the idea of URLs, these names for things
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0:55 - 0:57which started with HTTP.
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0:57 - 0:59I wrote the code and put it out there.
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0:59 - 1:01Why did I do it?
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1:01 - 1:03Well, it was basically frustration.
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1:03 - 1:07I was frustrated -- I was working as a software engineer
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1:07 - 1:09in this huge, very exciting lab,
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1:09 - 1:11lots of people coming from all over the world.
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1:11 - 1:14They brought all sorts of different computers with them.
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1:14 - 1:17They had all sorts of different data formats,
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1:17 - 1:19all sorts, all kinds of documentation systems.
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1:19 - 1:22So that, in all that diversity,
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1:22 - 1:24if I wanted to figure out how to build something
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1:24 - 1:26out of a bit of this and a bit of this,
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1:26 - 1:30everything I looked into, I had to connect to some new machine,
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1:30 - 1:32I had to learn to run some new program,
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1:32 - 1:37I would find the information I wanted in some new data format.
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1:37 - 1:39And these were all incompatible.
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1:39 - 1:41It was just very frustrating.
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1:41 - 1:43The frustration was all this unlocked potential.
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1:43 - 1:46In fact, on all these discs there were documents.
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1:46 - 1:49So if you just imagined them all
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1:49 - 1:54being part of some big, virtual documentation system in the sky,
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1:54 - 1:56say on the Internet,
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1:56 - 1:58then life would be so much easier.
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1:58 - 2:02Well, once you've had an idea like that it kind of gets under your skin
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2:02 - 2:04and even if people don't read your memo --
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2:04 - 2:07actually he did, it was found after he died, his copy.
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2:07 - 2:10He had written, "Vague, but exciting," in pencil, in the corner.
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2:10 - 2:12(Laughter)
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2:12 - 2:16But in general it was difficult -- it was really difficult to explain
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2:16 - 2:18what the web was like.
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2:18 - 2:20It's difficult to explain to people now that it was difficult then.
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2:20 - 2:23But then -- OK, when TED started, there was no web
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2:23 - 2:26so things like "click" didn't have the same meaning.
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2:26 - 2:28I can show somebody a piece of hypertext,
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2:28 - 2:30a page which has got links,
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2:30 - 2:34and we click on the link and bing -- there'll be another hypertext page.
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2:34 - 2:36Not impressive.
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2:36 - 2:39You know, we've seen that -- we've got things on hypertext on CD-ROMs.
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2:39 - 2:42What was difficult was to get them to imagine:
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2:42 - 2:46so, imagine that that link could have gone
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2:46 - 2:48to virtually any document you could imagine.
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2:49 - 2:53Alright, that is the leap that was very difficult for people to make.
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2:53 - 2:55Well, some people did.
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2:55 - 2:58So yeah, it was difficult to explain, but there was a grassroots movement.
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2:59 - 3:03And that is what has made it most fun.
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3:03 - 3:05That has been the most exciting thing,
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3:05 - 3:07not the technology, not the things people have done with it,
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3:07 - 3:09but actually the community, the spirit of all these people
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3:09 - 3:11getting together, sending the emails.
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3:11 - 3:13That's what it was like then.
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3:13 - 3:16Do you know what? It's funny, but right now it's kind of like that again.
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3:16 - 3:18I asked everybody, more or less, to put their documents --
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3:18 - 3:21I said, "Could you put your documents on this web thing?"
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3:21 - 3:24And you did.
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3:24 - 3:25Thanks.
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3:25 - 3:27It's been a blast, hasn't it?
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3:27 - 3:29I mean, it has been quite interesting
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3:29 - 3:31because we've found out that the things that happen with the web
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3:31 - 3:33really sort of blow us away.
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3:33 - 3:35They're much more than we'd originally imagined
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3:35 - 3:37when we put together the little, initial website
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3:37 - 3:39that we started off with.
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3:39 - 3:42Now, I want you to put your data on the web.
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3:42 - 3:46Turns out that there is still huge unlocked potential.
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3:46 - 3:48There is still a huge frustration
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3:48 - 3:52that people have because we haven't got data on the web as data.
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3:52 - 3:54What do you mean, "data"? What's the difference -- documents, data?
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3:54 - 3:57Well, documents you read, OK?
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3:57 - 4:00More or less, you read them, you can follow links from them, and that's it.
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4:00 - 4:02Data -- you can do all kinds of stuff with a computer.
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4:02 - 4:08Who was here or has otherwise seen Hans Rosling's talk?
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4:08 - 4:12One of the great -- yes a lot of people have seen it --
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4:12 - 4:14one of the great TED Talks.
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4:14 - 4:16Hans put up this presentation
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4:16 - 4:21in which he showed, for various different countries, in various different colors --
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4:21 - 4:24he showed income levels on one axis
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4:24 - 4:27and he showed infant mortality, and he shot this thing animated through time.
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4:27 - 4:31So, he'd taken this data and made a presentation
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4:31 - 4:34which just shattered a lot of myths that people had
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4:34 - 4:38about the economics in the developing world.
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4:38 - 4:40He put up a slide a little bit like this.
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4:40 - 4:42It had underground all the data
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4:42 - 4:45OK, data is brown and boxy and boring,
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4:45 - 4:47and that's how we think of it, isn't it?
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4:47 - 4:50Because data you can't naturally use by itself
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4:50 - 4:54But in fact, data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives
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4:54 - 4:57and it happens because somebody takes that data and does something with it.
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4:57 - 4:59In this case, Hans had put the data together
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4:59 - 5:04he had found from all kinds of United Nations websites and things.
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5:04 - 5:06He had put it together,
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5:06 - 5:09combined it into something more interesting than the original pieces
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5:09 - 5:14and then he'd put it into this software,
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5:14 - 5:16which I think his son developed, originally,
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5:16 - 5:19and produces this wonderful presentation.
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5:19 - 5:21And Hans made a point
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5:21 - 5:25of saying, "Look, it's really important to have a lot of data."
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5:25 - 5:28And I was happy to see that at the party last night
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5:28 - 5:32that he was still saying, very forcibly, "It's really important to have a lot of data."
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5:32 - 5:34So I want us now to think about
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5:34 - 5:38not just two pieces of data being connected, or six like he did,
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5:38 - 5:43but I want to think about a world where everybody has put data on the web
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5:43 - 5:45and so virtually everything you can imagine is on the web
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5:45 - 5:47and then calling that linked data.
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5:47 - 5:49The technology is linked data, and it's extremely simple.
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5:49 - 5:53If you want to put something on the web there are three rules:
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5:53 - 5:56first thing is that those HTTP names --
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5:56 - 5:58those things that start with "http:" --
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5:58 - 6:02we're using them not just for documents now,
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6:02 - 6:04we're using them for things that the documents are about.
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6:04 - 6:06We're using them for people, we're using them for places,
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6:06 - 6:10we're using them for your products, we're using them for events.
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6:10 - 6:14All kinds of conceptual things, they have names now that start with HTTP.
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6:14 - 6:19Second rule, if I take one of these HTTP names and I look it up
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6:19 - 6:21and I do the web thing with it and I fetch the data
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6:21 - 6:23using the HTTP protocol from the web,
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6:23 - 6:26I will get back some data in a standard format
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6:26 - 6:31which is kind of useful data that somebody might like to know
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6:31 - 6:33about that thing, about that event.
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6:33 - 6:35Who's at the event? Whatever it is about that person,
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6:35 - 6:37where they were born, things like that.
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6:37 - 6:39So the second rule is I get important information back.
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6:39 - 6:43Third rule is that when I get back that information
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6:43 - 6:46it's not just got somebody's height and weight and when they were born,
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6:46 - 6:48it's got relationships.
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6:48 - 6:50Data is relationships.
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6:50 - 6:52Interestingly, data is relationships.
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6:52 - 6:56This person was born in Berlin; Berlin is in Germany.
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6:56 - 6:59And when it has relationships, whenever it expresses a relationship
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6:59 - 7:02then the other thing that it's related to
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7:02 - 7:06is given one of those names that starts HTTP.
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7:06 - 7:08So, I can go ahead and look that thing up.
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7:08 - 7:11So I look up a person -- I can look up then the city where they were born; then
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7:11 - 7:14I can look up the region it's in, and the town it's in,
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7:14 - 7:17and the population of it, and so on.
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7:17 - 7:19So I can browse this stuff.
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7:19 - 7:21So that's it, really.
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7:21 - 7:23That is linked data.
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7:23 - 7:26I wrote an article entitled "Linked Data" a couple of years ago
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7:26 - 7:30and soon after that, things started to happen.
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7:30 - 7:34The idea of linked data is that we get lots and lots and lots
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7:34 - 7:36of these boxes that Hans had,
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7:36 - 7:38and we get lots and lots and lots of things sprouting.
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7:38 - 7:41It's not just a whole lot of other plants.
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7:41 - 7:43It's not just a root supplying a plant,
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7:43 - 7:46but for each of those plants, whatever it is --
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7:46 - 7:49a presentation, an analysis, somebody's looking for patterns in the data --
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7:49 - 7:52they get to look at all the data
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7:52 - 7:54and they get it connected together,
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7:54 - 7:56and the really important thing about data
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7:56 - 7:58is the more things you have to connect together, the more powerful it is.
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7:58 - 8:00So, linked data.
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8:00 - 8:02The meme went out there.
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8:02 - 8:06And, pretty soon Chris Bizer at the Freie Universitat in Berlin
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8:06 - 8:08who was one of the first people to put interesting things up,
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8:08 - 8:10he noticed that Wikipedia --
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8:10 - 8:13you know Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia
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8:13 - 8:15with lots and lots of interesting documents in it.
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8:15 - 8:19Well, in those documents, there are little squares, little boxes.
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8:19 - 8:22And in most information boxes, there's data.
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8:22 - 8:26So he wrote a program to take the data, extract it from Wikipedia,
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8:26 - 8:28and put it into a blob of linked data
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8:28 - 8:31on the web, which he called dbpedia.
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8:31 - 8:35Dbpedia is represented by the blue blob in the middle of this slide
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8:35 - 8:37and if you actually go and look up Berlin,
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8:37 - 8:39you'll find that there are other blobs of data
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8:39 - 8:42which also have stuff about Berlin, and they're linked together.
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8:42 - 8:45So if you pull the data from dbpedia about Berlin,
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8:45 - 8:47you'll end up pulling up these other things as well.
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8:47 - 8:50And the exciting thing is it's starting to grow.
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8:50 - 8:52This is just the grassroots stuff again, OK?
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8:52 - 8:55Let's think about data for a bit.
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8:55 - 8:58Data comes in fact in lots and lots of different forms.
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8:58 - 9:01Think of the diversity of the web. It's a really important thing
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9:01 - 9:04that the web allows you to put all kinds of data up there.
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9:04 - 9:06So it is with data. I could talk about all kinds of data.
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9:07 - 9:11We could talk about government data, enterprise data is really important,
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9:11 - 9:14there's scientific data, there's personal data,
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9:14 - 9:16there's weather data, there's data about events,
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9:16 - 9:20there's data about talks, and there's news and there's all kinds of stuff.
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9:20 - 9:23I'm just going to mention a few of them
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9:23 - 9:25so that you get the idea of the diversity of it,
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9:25 - 9:29so that you also see how much unlocked potential.
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9:29 - 9:31Let's start with government data.
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9:31 - 9:33Barack Obama said in a speech,
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9:33 - 9:38that he -- American government data would be available on the Internet
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9:38 - 9:40in accessible formats.
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9:40 - 9:42And I hope that they will put it up as linked data.
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9:42 - 9:44That's important. Why is it important?
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9:44 - 9:47Not just for transparency, yeah transparency in government is important,
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9:47 - 9:50but that data -- this is the data from all the government departments
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9:50 - 9:55Think about how much of that data is about how life is lived in America.
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9:55 - 9:57It's actual useful. It's got value.
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9:57 - 9:59I can use it in my company.
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9:59 - 10:01I could use it as a kid to do my homework.
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10:01 - 10:04So we're talking about making the place, making the world run better
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10:04 - 10:06by making this data available.
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10:06 - 10:10In fact if you're responsible -- if you know about some data
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10:10 - 10:12in a government department, often you find that
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10:12 - 10:15these people, they're very tempted to keep it --
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10:15 - 10:18Hans calls it database hugging.
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10:18 - 10:20You hug your database, you don't want to let it go
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10:20 - 10:22until you've made a beautiful website for it.
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10:22 - 10:24Well, I'd like to suggest that rather --
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10:24 - 10:26yes, make a beautiful website,
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10:26 - 10:28who am I to say don't make a beautiful website?
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10:28 - 10:31Make a beautiful website, but first
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10:31 - 10:34give us the unadulterated data,
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10:34 - 10:36we want the data.
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10:36 - 10:38We want unadulterated data.
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10:38 - 10:41OK, we have to ask for raw data now.
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10:41 - 10:43And I'm going to ask you to practice that, OK?
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10:43 - 10:44Can you say "raw"?
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10:44 - 10:45Audience: Raw.
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10:45 - 10:46Tim Berners-Lee: Can you say "data"?
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10:46 - 10:47Audience: Data.
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10:47 - 10:48TBL: Can you say "now"?
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10:48 - 10:49Audience: Now!
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10:49 - 10:51TBL: Alright, "raw data now"!
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10:51 - 10:53Audience: Raw data now!
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10:53 - 10:57Practice that. It's important because you have no idea the number of excuses
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10:57 - 10:59people come up with to hang onto their data
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10:59 - 11:03and not give it to you, even though you've paid for it as a taxpayer.
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11:03 - 11:05And it's not just America. It's all over the world.
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11:05 - 11:08And it's not just governments, of course -- it's enterprises as well.
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11:08 - 11:11So I'm just going to mention a few other thoughts on data.
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11:11 - 11:16Here we are at TED, and all the time we are very conscious
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11:16 - 11:21of the huge challenges that human society has right now --
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11:21 - 11:24curing cancer, understanding the brain for Alzheimer's,
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11:24 - 11:27understanding the economy to make it a little bit more stable,
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11:27 - 11:29understanding how the world works.
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11:29 - 11:31The people who are going to solve those -- the scientists --
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11:31 - 11:33they have half-formed ideas in their head,
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11:33 - 11:36they try to communicate those over the web.
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11:36 - 11:39But a lot of the state of knowledge of the human race at the moment
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11:39 - 11:42is on databases, often sitting in their computers,
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11:42 - 11:45and actually, currently not shared.
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11:45 - 11:48In fact, I'll just go into one area --
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11:48 - 11:50if you're looking at Alzheimer's, for example,
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11:50 - 11:53drug discovery -- there is a whole lot of linked data which is just coming out
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11:53 - 11:55because scientists in that field realize
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11:55 - 11:58this is a great way of getting out of those silos,
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11:58 - 12:02because they had their genomics data in one database
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12:02 - 12:05in one building, and they had their protein data in another.
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12:05 - 12:08Now, they are sticking it onto -- linked data --
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12:08 - 12:11and now they can ask the sort of question, that you probably wouldn't ask,
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12:11 - 12:13I wouldn't ask -- they would.
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12:13 - 12:15What proteins are involved in signal transduction
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12:15 - 12:17and also related to pyramidal neurons?
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12:17 - 12:20Well, you take that mouthful and you put it into Google.
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12:20 - 12:23Of course, there's no page on the web which has answered that question
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12:23 - 12:25because nobody has asked that question before.
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12:25 - 12:27You get 223,000 hits --
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12:27 - 12:29no results you can use.
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12:29 - 12:32You ask the linked data -- which they've now put together --
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12:32 - 12:3632 hits, each of which is a protein which has those properties
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12:36 - 12:38and you can look at.
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12:38 - 12:41The power of being able to ask those questions, as a scientist --
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12:41 - 12:43questions which actually bridge across different disciplines --
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12:43 - 12:46is really a complete sea change.
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12:46 - 12:48It's very very important.
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12:48 - 12:50Scientists are totally stymied at the moment --
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12:50 - 12:55the power of the data that other scientists have collected is locked up
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12:55 - 12:58and we need to get it unlocked so we can tackle those huge problems.
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12:58 - 13:02Now if I go on like this, you'll think that all the data comes from huge institutions
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13:02 - 13:05and has nothing to do with you.
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13:05 - 13:07But, that's not true.
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13:07 - 13:09In fact, data is about our lives.
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13:09 - 13:12You just -- you log on to your social networking site,
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13:12 - 13:14your favorite one, you say, "This is my friend."
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13:14 - 13:17Bing! Relationship. Data.
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13:17 - 13:20You say, "This photograph, it's about -- it depicts this person. "
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13:20 - 13:23Bing! That's data. Data, data, data.
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13:23 - 13:25Every time you do things on the social networking site,
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13:25 - 13:29the social networking site is taking data and using it -- re-purposing it --
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13:29 - 13:33and using it to make other people's lives more interesting on the site.
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13:33 - 13:35But, when you go to another linked data site --
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13:35 - 13:38and let's say this is one about travel,
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13:38 - 13:41and you say, "I want to send this photo to all the people in that group,"
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13:41 - 13:43you can't get over the walls.
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13:43 - 13:45The Economist wrote an article about it, and lots of people have blogged about it --
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13:45 - 13:46tremendous frustration.
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13:46 - 13:48The way to break down the silos is to get inter-operability
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13:48 - 13:50between social networking sites.
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13:50 - 13:52We need to do that with linked data.
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13:52 - 13:55One last type of data I'll talk about, maybe it's the most exciting.
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13:55 - 13:58Before I came down here, I looked it up on OpenStreetMap
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13:58 - 14:00The OpenStreetMap's a map, but it's also a Wiki.
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14:00 - 14:03Zoom in and that square thing is a theater -- which we're in right now --
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14:03 - 14:05The Terrace Theater. It didn't have a name on it.
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14:05 - 14:07So I could go into edit mode, I could select the theater,
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14:07 - 14:12I could add down at the bottom the name, and I could save it back.
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14:12 - 14:15And now if you go back to the OpenStreetMap. org,
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14:15 - 14:18and you find this place, you will find that The Terrace Theater has got a name.
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14:18 - 14:20I did that. Me!
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14:20 - 14:22I did that to the map. I just did that!
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14:22 - 14:24I put that up on there. Hey, you know what?
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14:24 - 14:27If I -- that street map is all about everybody doing their bit
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14:27 - 14:30and it creates an incredible resource
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14:30 - 14:33because everybody else does theirs.
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14:33 - 14:36And that is what linked data is all about.
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14:36 - 14:39It's about people doing their bit
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14:39 - 14:42to produce a little bit, and it all connecting.
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14:42 - 14:45That's how linked data works.
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14:45 - 14:49You do your bit. Everybody else does theirs.
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14:49 - 14:53You may not have lots of data which you have yourself to put on there
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14:53 - 14:56but you know to demand it.
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14:56 - 14:58And we've practiced that.
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14:58 - 15:02So, linked data -- it's huge.
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15:02 - 15:05I've only told you a very small number of things
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15:05 - 15:07There are data in every aspect of our lives,
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15:07 - 15:10every aspect of work and pleasure,
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15:10 - 15:13and it's not just about the number of places where data comes,
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15:13 - 15:16it's about connecting it together.
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15:16 - 15:19And when you connect data together, you get power
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15:19 - 15:22in a way that doesn't happen just with the web, with documents.
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15:22 - 15:26You get this really huge power out of it.
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15:26 - 15:29So, we're at the stage now
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15:29 - 15:33where we have to do this -- the people who think it's a great idea.
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15:33 - 15:36And all the people -- and I think there's a lot of people at TED who do things because --
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15:36 - 15:38even though there's not an immediate return on the investment
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15:38 - 15:41because it will only really pay off when everybody else has done it --
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15:41 - 15:45they'll do it because they're the sort of person who just does things
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15:45 - 15:48which would be good if everybody else did them.
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15:48 - 15:50OK, so it's called linked data.
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15:50 - 15:52I want you to make it.
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15:52 - 15:54I want you to demand it.
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15:54 - 15:56And I think it's an idea worth spreading.
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15:56 - 15:57Thanks.
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15:57 - 16:00(Applause)
- Title:
- The next web
- Speaker:
- Tim Berners-Lee
- Description:
-
20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 16:32
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The next web | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The next web | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for The next web | ||
TED added a translation |